The Girl With The Insert Here Tattoo
by LuxaLucifer
Summary: "What, your magnificent presence would have fixed everything? Sorry, SuperMax, that's not how it works. You couldn't have made everything better even if you'd been the master of time back then. Just…not how it works."


Written sometime before episode four, Pricefield. Written for my 20 Fandoms Challenge and inspired by my friend grannyrag on tumblr's great LIS work.

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"What do you think things would be like if I'd never left?" she hears herself ask. She knows it is a silly thing to say but she does it anyway; story of her life.

Chloe thankfully doesn't lift her hands of the wheel when she looks over and glares at Max. "What the hell kind of question is that?"

Max sometimes feels like her daily life has a soundtrack laid over it, or she does now that she's become the next best thing to an anime character. Turning back time? Completely normal, totally expected, and who cares anyway when you have soothing indie music at your back?

"I don't know, she replies, nervously looking out the window rather than meeting Chloe's eyes. She doesn't know what she expected the response would be, but it isn't this. She isn't sure why; she should have expected it.

"We can't exactly turn back the ti-" Chloe begins to say before cutting herself off with a loud laugh. "Hey, see that! Totally an accident, man, but a great joke."

"It's okay," says Max, smiling despite herself. "I've heard better."

"Oh yeah?" says Chloe. "Who'd you hear better from? All your friends in Seattle?"

Max's smile fell away. "Chloe…"

"You brought it up, Max. That shit's on you."

"I didn't have a lot of friends in Seattle," she replies, wondering if the indie soundtrack is swelling so loudly that you can hardly hear the words she says. She wonders who'd even be listening.

"But you had a couple right?" asks Chloe.

"Yeah," she says. "A couple. But they weren't much. They weren't you." A wave of guilt rises for making so little of the people she'd spent years with, because Kristen and Fernando deserve at least a little better treatment than that, but there's something about this new Chloe that constantly makes Max want to impress her, to show her that she really does care. Maybe that's not Chloe at all; maybe that's all Max.

"Okay, so what was the question again?" says Chloe. "What shit would be like if you'd never left, right?"

"Something like that," she says, resisting the urge to run her fingers over the writing in Chloe's truck. This old thing has been though a lot, you can tell just by looking at it.

"Still think it's a stupid fucking question, but let's give it a go," says Chloe, probably because she's had to slow the car down. Some kind of traffic jam, and Max knows Chloe will lose her mind about it if they don't keep talking.

"If you'd have stuck around…man, imagine all the shit you, me, and Rachel would have gotten into! We could have been like the Three Musketeers."

"You think so?" asks Max, trying not to let the surge of jealousy consume her like she was a character in an elementary school video's VHS tape on the evils of envy.

"Yeah, we would have kicked so much ass! It would have been great. Arcadia Bay wouldn't have been able to handle it."

"Definitely," says Max, mustering the enthusiasm. "Totally would have ripped this town apart. Although I think you two managed that without you."

"You know," says Chloe. "She's not you. You're not her. You're Max Caulfield, not Rachel Amber, and I don't one or the other of you, I want both, okay? We'll find her, and I won't drop her like you did to me."

She opens her mouth to say something but nothing comes out. What can she say to that?

Chloe sighs, shielding her eyes from the sun as they inch forward on the street. "That wasn't great of me. Sorry. I do a lot of not great things."

"Maybe if I'd been here you wouldn't."

"What, your magnificent presence would have fixed everything? Sorry, SuperMax, that's not how it works. You couldn't have made everything better even if you'd been the master of time back then. Just...not how it works."

"But me being there for you…it would have meant something."

"Everything means something, Maxerino. Everything."

She lets out an undignified snort. "Maxerino?"

Chloe looks over at her and grins. "You like it? I think I might keep it. Get it tattooed on my as a tramp stamp. Maxerino, forever inked on my body."

"I think I'd hold off on the tattoo," she says, laughing so hard she's leaning forward and covering her mouth, habits so old she can't remember why she formed them. "Unless you decided to get little hearts all over it. That would be a different story."

"Sorry, I only get hearts tattoos for people I'm fucking," says Chloe. "Or going to fuck, or want to fuck, or…well, you get the picture."

Max snorts again, because apparently that's how she laughs now. "Okay, if you say so."

"You know," says Chloe. "I can see getting a heart tattoo for you."

Max's heart literally skips a beat, leaving a sharp and lingering pain in her chest cavity. She whips her head around to stare at Chloe. "What?"

Chloe turns her head and shoots Max a grin. "Who knows, maybe if you'd stayed I'd already have one."

Max feels her chest ache and wonders why Chloe always has to remind her of what has been lost.

"But you know," Chloe adds as the cars in front of begin to move, finally resuming their respective paths down the worn road. "It's not too late."

"You don't think so?"

"You don't have to go back in time to win me over, Max," says Chloe. "Even I don't ask that much, okay? I'm here right here and now. That's the shit that matters. Max and Chloe, partners."

"In crime?"

"For now," says Chloe, and her next look directed to Max is warm, and she lets herself lean against the weathered seat and shoots the girl with the skull tattoo (see what she did there?) a happy smile, hoping that someday she really will get to trace the heart on Chloe's skin with the same intensity that they press their lips together.


End file.
